Hear the Signals!
"Two considerations and notions stood at the inception of this show, one positive and one negative. The positive: awareness of the work of some painters, the exhibitionary presentation of which practically imposed itself upon me. The negative: a certain helplessness in the face of the artificially overstimulated art world, the hectic coasting in neutral and the organized hubbub. Perhaps – like the artists exhibited here – I also felt a need for order and a clarification of perspectives."
Arnold Rüdlinger, opening speech Signale (1965), Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland.
The exhibition Signale was dedicated to painting that has sometimes been canonized as "hard edged" – that is, mainly large-format, geometric painting. It paired works by Kenneth Noland, Al Held, Jules Olitski, and Ellsworth Kelly with paintings by European artists such as Georg Karl Pfahler, John Plumb, Hansjörg Mattmüller and William Turnbull. This was a strategy that Harald Szeemann, Rüdlinger's protegé and later successor in Bern, often used too.
In 2025, 60 years after this important exhibition, Galerie Mueller is providing renewed focus on this important 1960s art movement that happened parallel to Zero. The exibition, fittingly with the English title Signals, shows once again works by the Swiss artists Theodor Bally and Luigi Lurati, Germanies first hard edge painter Georg Karl Pfahler with the American hard edge painters Al Held, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski and with it Galerie Mueller is thus expanding its research into the transatlantic dialog in post-war art.